A few years ago, writer Rick Elice accepted a lunch invitation from two of the members of the Four Seasons to talk about the possibility of writing a musical about the group.

Elice drafted his friend and sometime collaborator Marshall Brickman to come along, but neither was excited about the idea, and Elice planned to cancel. But he forgot to do that, and so, when the day of the lunch arrived, they had no choice but to go dine with Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio.

“We sat at the back of this dark restaurant, and while we were waiting for the salad to come, they started talking about the band and how it came together: They were arrested, they were in prison, they had all these friends in the mob. And, incidentally, they were making these records,” Elice recalled.

Neither had heard any of these stories before — the Four Seasons, Elice noted, never got the kind of splashy attention that some of their musical contemporaries did — and their earlier disinterest swiftly faded.

“What kind of blessing is that for a writer?” Elice said. “A good story that's unfamiliar?”

Elice and Brickman, working with director Des McAnuff, turned those stories into “Jersey Boys.” The musical begins a three-week stand at the Majestic Theatre on Wednesday.

The musical won four Tonys and a dedicated following. The show's structure — the group's story is told from the perspectives of founding members Valli, Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and the late Nick Massi — was inspired in part by that lunch date.

“(It was) courtesy of having listened to Bob and Frankie contradict each other, (just like) any old married couple, which these guys are,” Elice said. “They've been partners on a handshake for 50 years, but they remember things differently. Then we talked to Tommy DeVito, and the first thing he said was, ‘Don't listen to that (bull); I'll tell you what really happened.'”

Rather than trying to make the accounts jibe, Elice said, “we realized we didn't have to. We would write each character's version.”

Gaudio and Valli were the main Seasons involved behind the scenes, but because of their commitments, they weren't hands-on in the development of the story. The first time they saw the whole thing was as part of the audience at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego. That's where the show was developed.

Watching it, Gaudio said, was “extremely surreal.”

Scenes touching on the death of Valli's daughter hit hard, Gaudio said: “It was very emotional. I was there when that happened, and being with Frankie in that moment in the show — I wasn't really sure how he was going to handle it. We were both in tears.”

From La Jolla, the show went to Broadway and was ultimately nominated for eight Tonys, including the biggie: Best Musical.

Gaudio was in the audience and noticed that, when that category was announced, the nearest cameraman was perched near the “Drowsy Chaperone” crowd.

“When I saw that — I'm pretty savvy in that department — I thought, ‘That's not looking good,'” Gaudio said. “I never saw a cameraman move so quickly (as when ‘Jersey Boys' was called as the winning show). He had to get to the other side of the theater.”